Shorts, fests, etc, 9/21.

Today's must-read: Jonathan Lethem has emerged from "the salt mine of a novel-in-progress" and finally caught up with the year's big movie. A single snippet won't do the piece justice, but here we go: "No wonder we crave an entertainment like The Dark Knight, where every topic we're unable to quit not-thinking about is whirled into a cognitively dissonant milkshake of rage, fear and, finally, absolving confusion."

Also in the New York Times:

• David Foster Wallace "was the kind of literary figure whose career was emblematic of his age," writes AO Scott. "He may not have been the most famous novelist of his time, but more than anyone else, he exemplified and articulated the defining anxieties and attitudes of his generation." More from novelist Joshua Ferris in the Observer and Phil Nugent.

• Disney's about to relaunch the Muppets, reports Brooks Barnes: "Instead of the take-it-slow approach, this time the Muppets are getting the 'Hannah Montana' treatment, being blasted into every pop-culture nook and cranny that the company owns or can dream up."

• Terrence Rafferty talks with Fernando Meirelles about Blindness: "To make this movie in a spirit faithful to its source, a 1995 novel (of the same name) by the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, Mr Meirelles had to resign himself to flying blind."

"[T]hese 'obit-defining' moments are the scariest part of our existence. No matter what we want to be noticed for, it's often something else entirely that defines our time on earth." Raymond de Felitta looks back on the life and work of his friend and mentor, Edward Dmytryk, who turned 100 on September 5. Why did that day go by "virtually unnoticed, unreported and un-cared about by even the hardest-core cinema buffs"? Raymond de Felitta is pretty sure he knows why.

For Artforum, Catherine Taft recently attended Taryn Simon's "Gagosian opening of An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, a project that painstakingly catalogues the hidden logistics of American culture during these 'violent times' (from avian-quarantine facilities and a US Customs contraband room to Braille editions of Playboy and the art collection at CIA headquarters). Surprisingly, the crowd of hip, affluent escapists didn't so much stand out against Simon's tell-all photographs as bring into stark focus a hunger for politicized images on (and about) the home front."

"Michael Winterbottom and Road to Guantanamo collaborator Mat Whitecross are working on documentary The Shock Doctrine," reports Screen Daily's Chris Evans. "The film is based on a book by Naomi Klein which aims to expose what she calls 'disaster capitalism.' The theory is that neo-liberal capitalism feeds on natural disasters, war and terror to establish its dominance." Via Movie City News.

Oliver Stone's W. will open the Austin Film Festival (October 16 through 23). Jette Kernion has more. Speaking of Stone, Paul Kedrosky's got an amusing note on his recent chat with Alicia Mundy of the Wall Street Journal.

"Much like Michael Moore's Sicko, Critical Condition reminds us of the absurd choices people are forced to make in order to preserve their health," writes Chuck Tryon. "Get a paper divorce to reduce medical costs? Cross the border to get surgery at a significantly reduced cost? Take expensive pills or fall behind on your mortgage? While Critical Condition lacks the historical grounding that I found valuable in Moore's film (the history of HMOs, in particular), the film illustrates the degree to which so many health insurance organizations place profit over care, while also illustrating the fact that in the long run, we end paying more when people don't have adequate access to health care, not merely financially but morally as well." PBS, September 30.

For the Los Angeles Times, John Horn checks in with Diablo Cody to see how Jennifer's Body is coming along.

Alice Fischer talks with Matthew Goode for the Observer, where Philip French looks back on the career of Charles Laughton.

Online viewing tips. All from Jerry Lentz: Kenneth Tynan interviews Laurence Olivier; a BBC doc on The Third Man; and Cinema of Vengeance, a 1993 doc on martial arts in the movies.

Posted by dwhudson at September 21, 2008 2:58 PM